The 35th international Geological Congress is taking place in Capetown, South Africa, from the 27th August to the 4th of September, 2016. I take this opportunity to invite you to submit an abstract to our session on:
Rifted basins and margins: architecture and evolution
Individual rift basins and rifted margin segments differ significantly in terms of the distribution of surface strain, crustal and lithospheric thinning in time and space, as well as the amount of magmatism and serpentinisation. The influence of factors such as mantle temperature, initial tectonic setting, extension rate and direction as well as sedimentation and tectonics/climate interaction have all been extensively explored but there is not yet a consensus on which of these factors or any other most influence rift architecture and its development.
This session aims to assemble geophysical, geological and geochemical observations and models of rift basins and rifted margins that give insight into the critical controlling factors on their evolution. Given the complex nature of continental breakup, we especially seek interdisciplinary contributions that combine observations and models to explore links between key processes across scales, such as, faulting, magmatism, sedimentation and erosion margin-scale strain evolution and interaction with plate motion history.